The Lipscani district is the historic commercial core of Bucharest, named after merchants who traded with Leipzig (Lipsca in Romanian) in the 1700s. Allowed to crumble through the Communist decades, it was rescued and pedestrianised in the 2000s and is now the city's social heart — a tight grid of narrow cobbled streets crammed with bars, restaurants, terraces, and the occasional surviving caravanserai or 16th-century church.
By day it is a pleasant place to wander past the ruins of the Old Princely Court, the carved facade of Stavropoleos, and the curved glass arcade of Pasajul Macca-Vilacrosse. By night the whole district turns into one long terrace. It can be touristy and the food is uneven — eat at Caru' cu Bere or one of the side-street places rather than the menu-pushers on the main strip — but the energy is undeniable.